In its last insult to organized labor the Regime's $13.4 billion rescue package for General Motors requires the UAW to refrain from striking the failing car company for as long as the company accepts federal money to stay in business. If the union strikes or stops work, the agreement gives the government the power to call in its loans and force the company into bankruptcy. The union must also agree to accept a plan to rollback wages and benefits to match US workers at foreign owned manufacturers (read: Toyota). It also requires the union to take two-thirds of the money it is due for a retiree health-care trust fund in company stock rather than cash or company debt reported the Detroit Free Press. The company has until December 2011 to pay back the federal loans. In 2008, GM CEO Rick Wagoner received a salary increase -- to $2.2 million, plus stock options -- despite the fact the company had been losing money since 2005. Such a deal. Maybe the company would make money if it manufactured what no one else is making now--electric cars. The company actually made a usable electric car, the EV-1, and tested it in California. After a successful test market, it recalled the vehicles and crushed them [photo]. Instead of a head start[1], the US will be behind China which has announced plans to export extant electric cars to the US. As long as Uncle Sam is running GM's business, it should require the development and marketing of a US made electric car capable of traveling long distance.Of course this is not the first time GM made cultural decisions on what type of vehicles Americans will ride. GM and National City Lines conspired to eliminate metropolitan trolley car systems which GM's President Alfred Sloan viewed as unwanted competitors for the automobile. By 1946, ten years after its
founding, National City Lines owned 83 metropolitan trolley lines in the US. There was no visible connection between GM and National City Lines, but in reality GM subsidiaries, Greyhound and Yellow Coach bus lines provided start-up capital, and members of Greyhound sat on National City Lines' board of directors. The director of operations came from Yellow Coach. Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Firestone Tire Company, Mack Truck, and Phillips Petroleum joined the fossil fuel conspiracy to eliminate electrified public transportation. The Justice Department succeeded in obtaining a criminal conspiracy conviction. The companies were each fined just $5,000 for eliminating urban transportation systems that would now cost hundreds of billions to replace. The Justice Department spent the next twenty five years and three investigations trying to prove the antitrust case against GM. Eventually the company settled two cases out of court and the third case was dropped. Wackydoodle sez: "My daddy always asked, 'Lordy, Mr. Fordie, what have you done?'"[1]The first-generation lithium-ion batteries powering Toyota's PHVs (plug-in hybrid vehicles) will be built on an assembly line at Toyota’s PEVE (Panasonic EV Energy Company, LTD) battery plant, a joint-venture production facility in which Toyota owns 60 percent equity. During its development, the new Prius was designed and engineered to package either the lithium-ion battery pack with plug-in capability, or the nickel-metal hydride battery for the conventional gas-electric system. The 500 PHVs arriving globally in late 2009 will be used for market and engineering analysis.